Well as you might have noticed, it’s been too long since we have provided some updates on the website! While it is no excuse, we have been very busy in the field, literally, on the ball field! It has been a fun season for us at Friends of Baseball, including three Portland Metro area summer Full Count enrichment camps, with the second and third camps just wrapping up. We have two more ahead to round out the summer! What a blast it has been!

Jul 25–29 and Aug 1–5 at Roseway Heights for Madison Cluster –partnership with Madison High School baseball

This doesn’t include our pilot camp up in Seattle WA, in partnership with a fantastic organization called Baseball Beyond Borders, a community development organization providing developmental teams in the 16U and 18U age divisions through Inner-City schools in the Seattle area. Since it is a pilot run, it is a scaled down version of our traditional Full Count Camp, it is a one day a week camp, weekly through the month of July and into August. Important to have our programs expanding across the Pacific Northwest — but you don’t have to believe us — you can tell from the smiling faces below!

Opening Day was fun for us too! Not only did we get to celebrate it with our Partner Green Zebra grocery in North Portland kicking off the 2016 season, we also had the chance to give back to our friends at the Mariners. Specifically to a special kind of person by the name of Miles. Miles is an usher at Safeco field and has been for years, and he has made it his mission to keep the love of collecting baseball cards alive by handing out (from his own collection mind you) baseball cards to each young fan walking through his gate to Safeco field. We had the chance to replenish his stash of cards thanks to a generous gift from a local, true Friend of Baseball, Bruce Kracke. It was an honor to meet Miles and the smile on his face when we surprised him with over 10,000 cards — was priceless!

Off the field, we have also expanded our board with 2 new members (Cindy Nichol and Drew Hagedorn) who we will introduce further after they have had a chance to get their feet wet. We just conducted our yearly strategy meeting in June. Both Cindy and Drew are jumping right in to get involved from the get go! Nova and the rest of the FOB board can’t wait to utilize their skills and passion for youth baseball and softball in the NW as we continue with our Can I Play initiative!And finally the biggest reason we are in transition, we are working hard to update our website, which we are very excited about! Not only will it be more informative, but easier for you, our visitors, to help contribute to the amazing game of youth baseball in the NWthrough FOB. Please stay tuned for the big reveal…coming soon!As we continue to finalize the website, please be patient. Keep in touch with us through FaceBook and most importantly, come and see us for our Gala on September 23rd at the Oregon Golf Club (for information, email nova@friendsofbaseball.org). In the meantime, I hope this update provides a glimpse into what we are up to and a chance to say THANK YOU to everyone who has supported our efforts over the years. As we always say…#baseballbuildscommunity.Play Ball!Ben LongcorFriends of Baseball Co-Founder/President